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SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

389 points by ScotterC 14y ago

error54 14y ago
Can someone explain what exactly happened with SimCity? From the article I gather that it had something to do with DRM but the author never explained what exactly made it unplayable.
- criley 14y ago
  Trouble downloading and installing the game, massive login queues (that recheck the queue once every 30 minutes), trouble creating cities, troubles loading creating cities, disconnections, features have been removed to help handle stress, etc. Basically, it's hard to get it downloaded and installed. If you do that, it's very difficult to login to play. If you manage that, it's very difficult to do the tutorial or claim a city or load your city. If you manage that, it's very difficult to play the game without experiencing disconnects or server-related dysfunction that directly affects gameplay. Basically, it's nothing like the experience they wanted to deliver.
  - sageikosa 14y ago
    They should probably have an "achievement" for passing each of those hurdles; turn the task of running a game into a game itself...
    - nwh 14y ago
      Achievements are disabled at the moment, so that wouldn't work either.
- ryusage 14y ago
  You have to be connected to their servers to play it, just like you would with an MMO style game. Unfortunately, just like an MMO style game at launch, their servers are totally overloaded right now and many people are just completely unable to play the game. The uproar is because the online requirement isn't inherently necessary to the gameplay (although EA has done their best to add some multiplayer aspects). It's primarily a business decision intending to make it more difficult to pirate or buy the game used.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- kwanbis 14y ago
  They implemented a DRM scheme where you have to be always connected to the internet, and their servers. Servers fail. Game does not game.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  The latest, just released, version of SimCity includes a form of DRM which basically involves hosting a part of the game's functions on a server, so that the only way to play the game is to be connected to the server. Due to whatever reason, likely poor capacity planning, a huge number of people who have bought the game have not been able to play it at all due to the servers being overloaded or inaccessible.
- error54 14y ago
  Thanks everyone for clearing that up for me!
ScotterC 14y ago
I've been kind of surprised by ign's writing lately. They've gotten a lot more thoughtful, past the simple game review writing and have much more intelligent pieces these days.
kyrra 14y ago
Having played simcity as much as the servers have allowed since launch, there are definitely a number of online tie-ins. I'm sure they could have done it with player run servers or LAN type connectivity, but it removes the social aspect of the game. I rather line being able to look at the leader board, then load the cities listed there to see what they look like. Playing with a few friends in a region is a pretty cool idea, though there are fewer interactions as I would have liked, there are still a lot. Their server connectivity is definitu beyond just DRM, but it's hard to say how they could have done their design without the server aspect.
- mikeash 14y ago
  Surely those tie-ins could have been written to degrade gracefully when the servers are unavailable, rather than just refusing to run the entire game.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    I'm mixed on this. I really dislike online DRM, but one of the greatest weaknesses of SimCity 4 was that the average home computer had no hope of simulating a large city. This is still true today - while most computers could handle the graphics engine behind it, the simulation engine would still eat your machine for lunch. Moving the city simulation server-side certainly has its justifications - it opens up the field to more players with weaker machines. That being said, it's hard to imagine that, given the ginormous increase in CPU performance between SimCity 4 and now, that they couldn't have made a simulation engine fast enough (and optimized enough) to run offline.
    - mikeash 14y ago
      Is this actually the case? I've seen a lot of people say it, but then I've also seen some people say that they were able to keep playing for considerable periods of time even while the servers were offline. It sounds like one of those things where marketing-speak got misinterpreted as a technical design that isn't actually how it's built, but I really haven't investigated besides reading comments.
seanoliver 14y ago
I've been looking forward to this game for years now. I thought it would never come. And now that it's here I'm totally saddened and appalled that EA would ruin such an incredible legacy for such petty reasons. There has to be another way to stem piracy without totally obliterating the value of an otherwise excellent game...
- islon 14y ago
  That's what EA does best: ruin games. (Yeah, I know there are exceptions).
- samsolomon 14y ago
  It is unfortunate. I've also been waiting on this game for years. On the plus side there are some entertaining 5-star reviews. http://www.amazon.com/SimCity-Limited-Edition-Pc/product-reviews/B007FTE2VW/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_5?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addFiveStar&showViewpoints=0 http://www.amazon.com/SimCity-Limited-Edition-Pc/product-rev...
jfoutz 14y ago
If anyone could achieve a decent launch, it's blizzard. They have a lot of money and talent, and a real attention to detail. They're willing to wait to ship games "till they're ready" But launch still eludes them. I've purchased every game through Diablo 3, but that put me off the whole thing. Heart of the swarm will be the first Blizzard game i just don't bother with. The launch will be a disaster. Since they've taken away any reason for me to get excited about the launch, i've found that really leaks over into my excitement about the game. Good luck to EA, good luck to Blizzard, you've committed your businesses to a technical infrastructure you're just not competent to build or manage. Seems like a risky strategy to me. Especially because games aren't really that important. It's not critical like food. There are a bunch of other offerings available.
- Fauntleroy 14y ago
  I don't recall the Starcraft 2 launch being hindered in any large way, so I can't imagine the Heart of the Swarm launch being any worse. Guess we'll all find out in a few days...
- toki5 14y ago
  > But launch still eludes them. I've purchased every game through Diablo 3, but that put me off the whole thing. Heart of the swarm will be the first Blizzard game i just don't bother with. The launch will be a disaster. This seems to me a bold claim to make. Diablo III's launch was, in many ways, a huge new service for them, a new infrastructure to test and maintain, and they were quick to fix issues with it. Compare this to the launch of The Burning Crusade expansion pack -- it was a rough launch! -- but over time, they managed to smooth their systems out such that now, even a content launch as huge as Mists of Pandaria went smoothly. WoW is a different game, but it illustrates their iterative healing process. Since the Wings of Liberty launch went smoothly, I wouldn't expect anything less of Heart of the Swarm, as it's being released on a system that's here, ready, polished, and tested. We might see a few hiccups, but nothing close to Diablo III. I'd hardly call Battle.net an infrastructure that Blizzard is "just not competent to build or manage."
  - jfoutz 14y ago
ry0ohki 14y ago
Can someone confirm that the online mode offers nothing but DRM? The fact that they had to disable Cheetah speed makes me think they really are offloading some of the game simulations to the servers. It certainly feels like a much speedier game then SimCity 4 (when it works).
- s666 14y ago
  there is no "offline" mode, its all online and it all doesnt work
- danielweber 14y ago
  Parts of the game logic are run on the server. I don't expect more game companies to stay away from this; I expect them to do this a lot more for PC gaming. Probably not explicitly, but as much as people in /r/technology insists piracy doesn't matter, the companies continue to care. With online games, the need to worry about that largely evaporates. Instead, I expect companies to put in proper rate limiting, fallbacks, and plan for the ability to spin up extra servers in case of high demand.
  - fennecfoxen 14y ago
    "Parts of the game logic are run on the server." By which they mean: storage of save-games, and resource trading with your city-neighbors. That is ALL.
    - DocG 14y ago
      You are right. People have managed to play trough server crashes without noticing. Only after they quit to region, it disconnects. City is managed locally. Only region management save files are server side.
    - betterunix 14y ago
      If I remember SimCity correctly, saved games are pretty important. One can only get so far without saving...
s666 14y ago
Its a fucking disaster, for 3 days im looking at "server busy" message, in that time i only managed to play for about 1 hour total and it lost my city somewhere! grrr fuck you EA
diminoten 14y ago
So can I pirate this bad boy? What's the status of the crack?
- danielweber 14y ago
  It's an online game. Pirating it is about as feasible as running a pirate copy of google.com.
  - bradbeattie 14y ago
    Online in its final packaging perhaps, but what effort would it take to get running locally? If one can play offline for a couple of minutes, the online portion is likely not as critical as it's being portrayed.
  - illuminate 14y ago
    "It's an online game. Pirating it is about as feasible as running a pirate copy of google.com" What a silly, untrue statement. A better analogy would be "as feasible as running a copy of World of Warcraft offline", which people do.
    - sgarman 14y ago
      Which in a way relates to Irregardless's post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5345217 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5345217. One of my favorite MMO's Ragnarok Online won't get locked away and lost when Gravity decides to close it down, there are plenty of backends and open source projects that support the game.
      - illuminate 14y ago
        I really prefer playing shards to the original game. Less/no grind, I can whiz through most of a MMO including the minimal story in a few months, the price isn't necessarily the issue, I just don't care to compete with millions of other people and devote several days a week to survive at that level and stay up to date (let alone be on "top".) I want to have fun, I don't need artificial constraints to surpass. Thank goodness for these emulators, which are fun now and will continue to be fun when pocket-sized in the future :)
ryusage 14y ago
It's an interesting case study. This happens with nearly every MMO and people grumble but accept it. Within a couple weeks, the server issues are mostly resolved and people don't think about it anymore. And yet, people are pissed about this. The fact that people see the game as single player seems to make a huge difference. It seems the lesson is that, if you want to do the always-on thing, you need to design your game so that it doesn't even make sense to play it alone. I'm really curious to see what SimCity's sales are like in a month though. I wouldn't be too terribly shocked if people just sucked it up and bought it anyway as long as the servers are stable. If that happens, then maybe EA didn't make such a mistake after all?
- dacilselig 14y ago
  I think EA's reputation was the fuel to the fire in the case. Kind of a perfect storm.
- masklinn 14y ago
  > The fact that people see the game as single player seems to make a huge difference. Indeed. And there's also the fact that MMO are — for the most part — "long term" experiences. Now single-player games can be as well, but for the most part are not, the majority of Diablo III buyers have probably moved on already to some other games, where a WoW player will be in it for years, so the rough few first weeks aren't much of an issue.
- Irregardless 14y ago
  Server woes are a necessary evil with MMOs, and people buy the game knowing they'll have to deal with some amount of downtime due to maintenance, overcrowding or just plain growing pains. Try telling FPS players that their game will be unavailable every Tuesday morning for 6-12 hours and they'll probably riot -- that's standard downtime in the MMO world though.
  - outworlder 14y ago
    No, that's actually standard WOW downtime. Check out Eve Online. They've been gradually decreasing downtime. Last time I played, it was like 30 minutes every day, with 15 minutes just for the cluster to reboot (the client has a nice server status, with a countdown and ETA). Their goal was to reduce it to zero (it was 1 hour when I first started playing).
Irregardless 14y ago
> There's also the question of preserving gaming history. As we saw with THQ last month, publishers aren't immortal. They can die, and had THQ implemented always-online DRM in Darksiders II, all copies of that game might've died with it when the rights to the series weren't bought up by another publisher. That's the part that concerns me the most. I still install (and play) lots of old games on every computer I own -- King's Quest VI, C&C: Red Alert, Worms: Armageddon, etc. And who could live without the console classics like Goldeneye or Ocarina of Time? All you have to do is pull out the disc (or cartridge), pop it in, and play. We still don't know exactly what will happen with this new generation of games that consumers are merely "renting" from companies like EA, but piracy seems to be our only guaranteed method of preserving them. What happens if you want to play Battlefield 3 again 10 years from now? You might be able to access it IFF: 1. Your account is still in good standing (not banned) 2. EA still exists 3. EA has decided to maintain support for Origin 4. EA has decided to maintain support for Battlefield 3 5. You remember your PW or can prove to EA you're the account owner There's not much history to base this speculation on yet, but what little we do have shows that that's an extremely unlikely scenario. If there's any chance to preserve the games we're playing now, it's probably up to us to make it happen.
- danielweber 14y ago
  but piracy seems to be our only guaranteed method of preserving them You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. This is the future of gaming. Companies are just going to avoid all the grief of piracy and weird DRM by either moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles) or into games that have essential online components. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. I'd love to by a game and install it on my PC without it taking things over, and the publishers would love to write that and not worry about DRM. But we can't get that because each of us doesn't trust the other party to defect.
  - Irregardless 14y ago
    > You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. I'm tempted to believe that due to the simulation grunt work being done server-side. But people also said the same thing about WoW and Starcraft II, yet you can easily play either of those for free with fully functioning multiplayer (just not on Battle.net).
mjn 14y ago
Quip seen on Twitter [1]: "Disabling features of SimCity due to ineffective central infrastructure is probably the most realistic simulation of the modern city." [1] https://twitter.com/ibogost/status/309756131155271680 https://twitter.com/ibogost/status/309756131155271680
timc3 14y ago
I have been waiting to pay and play this for months now, even to the point of upgrading hardware. I was even part of the Beta. Well I am going to vote with my dollars and not buy it. Probably ever. If it worked offline it would have been a different story.
b3b0p 14y ago
If they had called this Sim City Online and marketed as not the next Sim City, but more of an MMO like Ever Quest, Guild Wars, and Star Wars Galaxies would be people be complaining as much if they knew they had to be online to play it. Sim City 4, 2000, and the original still run perfect and are extremely fun to play. Sim City 4 is on Steam even making it easy to get right now. I'm tempted to pick that up since I have not played it. I loved the original and 2000 though.
- jordan0day 14y ago
  This, exactly. In another discussion on hn, someone was basically saying "no one acts so surprised when you can't access Facebook if your internet connection is down, why are they so ticked off here?" I'd argue that it's because most people have a reasonable expectation that a locally-installed, single-player game should work regardless of connectivity. There may be potentially valid technical reasons why SimCity might need or even want a persistent connection, but you absolutely need to call that out. With EA's record of shutting down still-active servers for the multi-player portions of games that were just a few years old, I would be very reticent to buy an EA product that required a server even for single-player mode.
- mynameisvlad 14y ago
  So what would make it different from a regular SimCity game? The fact that it has the word online after it? That's a weak argument at best. They from the start called it a new game, not a sequel, and its been known for a long time that it would have the always-on component. The game was never meant to be a sequel. That's why it's calls SimCity and not SimCity 5. People just decide to interpret it as such even if its not.
  - svachalek 14y ago
    So you are arguing that "SimCity Online" does not sound different than a regular SimCity game, but "SimCity" does? Does not compute.
    - mynameisvlad 14y ago
zdgman 14y ago
I don't actually think this is a danger of always on DRM more growing pains from an industry (gaming) that is learning how to build infrastructure that can scale to the size of their audience. Games are going to move toward becoming services just like any popular web app you use in your day to day life and I am not mad about that. I don't ever give a second though to whether Pivotal Tracker, Evernote or Flickr will be around in a few years, I accept the thought that may not be and use the tools because I enjoy them. Gaming as a medium is trying to evolve and find a business model that can allow them to scale games to audiences that are bigger and trying to make them more complex without having to tap into all the power your computer / console may have. I have worked in the game industry and while I can support people being upset and I am more interested in how this impacts the type of gameplay experiences we have in the future. I would be interested in seeing startups spring up around supporting cloud infrastructure and analytics for game companies. Sort of like an amazon for Game Devs
jwr 14y ago
I treat anything that is DRM-encumbered as a rental, and make buying decisions accordingly. It is not something I own, and I do not expect to be able to use it beyond a certain time horizon (a year or two). Same goes for DRM-protected books or music.
- npsimons 14y ago
  Same here; only difference is, I don't rent books, music, movies, games or software. Sell me a copy, or lose a sale.
- TillE 14y ago
  Yep. For any game with severely limiting DRM, the maximum price I'm willing to pay is $5, which I deem fair for an indeterminate rental with no guarantees. I think Assassin's Creed 2 has been down to $6 a couple times on Steam sales, but I'm not quite willing to put down even one extra dollar. Oh well, their loss. Meanwhile, I've spent a couple hundred dollars on Kickstarter games in the recent past, all of which promised a DRM free option.
seanc722 14y ago
Oi... Don't get me started. I loved when my cousin would bring his PC over and we would just sit there playing CnC, Diablo or SC in LAN. Now we have to go online for everything and there is frequently issues.
jamespitts 14y ago
I predict that EA will cave-in to some extent and release a modified version of Sim City. Let the game be used in the manner that the vast majority of your paying customers prefer, or suffer a major loss of reputation.
- illuminate 14y ago
  "I predict that EA will cave-in to some extent and release a modified version of Sim City" Doubtful.
uptown 14y ago
Ironic that this is happening on a game that's all about mitigating disasters.
- Armbrs 14y ago
  It's all part of their plan. Now that everyone claims to know what EA should have done, they're primed to buy the sequel, SimServer. Where you get to layout the network infrastructure for a new online game.
zerohm 14y ago
I'm sorry but as a gaming enthusiast, I'm experiencing some major schadenfreude here. EA's tactics, ethics and influence have been the worst in the industry for the last 10 years. Pushing DRM, buying up smaller studios, releasing endless add-on packs and DLC. Thankfully I haven't been addicted to any of their games since Dungeon Keeper. That was a great game.
rozap 14y ago
I feel so sorry for guys and girls responsible for keeping the systems up and running at EA. Days without sleep, without a doubt. And I'm sure their managers are cracking the whips and blaming all the bad things an them. It just makes me sad to think of :(
- phene 14y ago
  They decided to work at that sweatshop...
borgchick 14y ago
I also miss the days when you could just start up a BF2 server on your LAN and have your family and friends join the game for some fun.
rohern 14y ago
I do not understand the gamer community. EA has been treating you guys like crap for years and you keep coming back for more. Just stop buying their products. I know it sucks not to have access to a new game, but make a stand for an industry you care about and stop supporting a lousy company that has distain for you.
davidroberts 14y ago
Having been required to defend undefensible companies policies in some customer service jobs I previously held, I feel really sorry for the customer service agent here. Probably somebody hoping to use this job as a leg up to something better, but now he is stuck in angry customer hell with nothing to do but quote policies that make them angrier. And his performance is probably being judged based on some customer satisfaction survey where even one unsatisfied customer is enough to lose a month's worth of bonuses.
jl6 14y ago
12 years ago I quit gaming because decent titles weren't available for Linux. I now have a great job and family, part of which I attribute to spending thousands of hours learning about life and technology instead of playing games. Give it up people, video games = fast-forwarding your life. (Actually I'm not really suggesting being that strict. I did return to play the occasional top title like Portal 2, but on a strictly controlled diet. Gaming should be a small enough part of your life that such DRM is a non-issue)
- lotharbot 14y ago
  My wife did excellent work on a training simulator, and regularly impressed both the military customer and higher ups on the corporate side. She credited three video games with building her most impressive skills: Descent taught her to visualize and maneuver in 3D space, Starcraft taught her to think about force composition and disposition, and Nethack taught her to make thousands of decisions (and type thousands of characters) without making mistakes. She still games pretty extensively (she'll be taking Tuesday off for the SC2 expansion), and has a great job and family. And at least part of her excellence is due to the way she uses video games to sharpen her mind.
  - lttlrck 14y ago
    Descent... well you needed as certain aptitude to play that game well. A degree in three-dimensional awareness would also have helped.
- danilocampos 14y ago
  > Give it up people, video games = fast-forwarding your life. While I agree with you in principle – I doubt I play more than one or two games a year – I resent your sanctimonious tone. You've no way of knowing how people are using their games. Modern games present a lot of opportunities for exploring power and morality. Even sexuality. For some, the escapism represented by games may be as close to vacation or therapy as economic reality allows. For others, they're a vacuous waste of time that could be better spent. But you don't know, so don't claim to.
- 14y ago
Buzaga 14y ago
2591 1 star ratings of 2805 total LOL! http://www.amazon.com/SimCity-Limited-Edition-Pc/dp/B007FTE2VW/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t http://www.amazon.com/SimCity-Limited-Edition-Pc/dp/B007FTE2... I'm thinking this fail may be so epic it can kill always-on-DRM forever, force EA to back up on their customer-pissing force-feeding stuff like this I'm not in the gaming industry, but launch is probably the most important event and, with this, they fucked the launch of one of the most adored, famous and known PC game franchises of the World Firstly, the game reviews will suffer forever(that amazon rating is probably NEVER cease to be 1 star [unless EA starts paying chinese to do that too]), that must cost sales Secondly and most important, word-of-mouth must account for A LOT of game sales, the hype of your friends, co-workers talking about a game must be the reason for most of non-hardcore-gamers sales... I, for example, only bought Diablo 3 because all my co-workers wouldn't shut about getting it, even tho I was a hardcore gamer in the past, played Diablo and Diablo 2, I wouldn't buy if it wasn't for the hype... people are PISSED and EA is probably losing a ton of money because of it I'm almost certain this DRM will ultimately cost them considerably more than piracy would take, it's perfect! As we say in Brazil: Time comes and the whip hits your own ass!
chinpokomon 14y ago
The truly disappointing thing to me, was that I was really excited and looking forward to playing Spore. That is another Maxis game produced by EA that I've completely lost interest in because of the DRM. From the sound of it, I need to stay away from this one too. It is as though EA doesn't want my money.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ignostic 14y ago
I dunno, you don't see the outcry when the thing is reliably up and working correctly. I play several games that are "always on" or "internet only," and we gamers seem completely fine with it as long as up-time is 99.99%. People bought the game knowing the DRM would be heavy. That's not what's killing SimCity. The real reason this failed is because it broke. It crashed and burned terrifically. It was implemented poorly, and it was really unreliable. The warning here is this: make shit that works. We would see the same outcry if an offline game crashed regularly, deleted saves, and had bugs on opening day that made it unplayable.
stcredzero 14y ago
> let it be yet another lesson to publishers like EA and Activision/Blizzard, and platform owners Microsoft and Sony, who may be considering always-on DRM in next-gen consoles or PC games: don't even think about it. It's a pipe dream But this is Always-Online DRM done wrong. You DO NOT prioritize prevention of pirate-enabled playing of your game. You DO NOT implement anything which causes legitimate users to not be able to play. You DO prioritize UX over anything else at launch. You bias heavily to avoid false positives. Legit users (i.e. customers) are your first priority -- as they should be. Most of all, you do not live in the fantasy world of DRM being some kind of impenetrable fortress. Basically, the resources of the entire Internet are arrayed against you, and the forces on your side constitute several hundred people in your company at most. You as the game publisher aren't the evil empire. You're the guerrillas. You don't have a vast army and an impenetrable fortress. You have a few fighters on your side and a jungle to hide in. Here is what you do: You prioritize detection. You let the pirates play. You let the pirates believe that they've broken your DRM by throwing some honeypot DRM at them for them to break. All the while, you're detecting them. Then, when they think they've won, you use assets that you can control (servers) to restrict the pirate-enabled users you've detected. The point here is to be the one to keep the pirates guessing, not the other way around. Let them announce cracks, then make sure they get egg on their face a week after their "release -- again and again. Basically, you fight dirty to make sure that your product is far superior to the pirate's. The way to have DLC in the modern age is to make sure that a key element of your "DLC" always stays on the server.
ddunkin 14y ago
It sounds like the torrent version is going to be awesome when it comes out, all the features we want without the BS in the way.
Pherdnut 14y ago
Why does it have to be a warning to publishers? Clearly customers keep coming back or they wouldn't keep repeating the same idiotic behavior. I'm not sure I feel sorry for anybody in this case other than the guy who was such a non-gamer he never heard of DRM.
suresk 14y ago
Perhaps its because I play MMOs and other online-only games, but the endless complaining about DRM and always-online play is getting a little boring. What I have to wonder, though, is how they botched the launch so badly. They know when they are launching, they (should) roughly know how many users each server can support, and they should have a rough idea of how many games they are going to sale in the first few days. How did they screw it up? Is forecasting game purchases that inexact? I'd think you could derive a number at least close to being accurate from the amount of pre-sales, then multiply it by some factor to give yourself some safety. At the very least, you'd think there'd be contingency plans for quickly standing up new servers in response to demand.
ashleyblackmore 14y ago
My experience of this article: 1) Read opening text 2) See container (presumably a video) with no explanation. I cannot load the video. 3) Read next paragraph to see what the video was about. No explanation. Close tab.
rikacomet 14y ago
I somehow saw this coming as recent as Sim City 4. But all in all, this is proving to be a good improvement, but a bad implementation. What is even the need of the online DRM? is this another of those: " Try to save billions of dollars from piracy, that do not exist " ? I was planning to buy this game, now I don't.
Kiro 14y ago
Am I the only one who has no problem with always-online DRM? In what situations don't you have internet nowadays?
- andyking 14y ago
  I'm moving house next week and won't have a connection to the internet for a little while. I'd rather pass the time playing SimCity than watch crap TV after work for a week or so.
- kaoD 14y ago
  I love playing Sim City 4 on holidays in a little village with no internet connection.
- dragontamer 14y ago
  The real question is: in what situation do you not have internet connection OR the server is down. In this case, it appears the server has been down for a significant number of players. Therefore, many people can't play... even if everything is fine on your end. Things get worse however. According to one of the links, EA's servers seem to have a corruption issue as well: http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2013/03/BEvZyQfCQAAlekP.jpg http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2013/03/BEvZ... If you can't trust that your city will be there tomorrow due to EA's shoddy servers, then there is very little incentive to even play the game. I guess it might happen with a local save as well... but local saves of a game seems like an easier problem to solve.
berlinbrown 14y ago
Is the game any good?
rdl 14y ago
They seem to have fixed most of the performance problems in the last couple days. Still not sure why they couldn't have done this correctly from the start, but it's at least not horrible now.
ptaipale 14y ago
Don't know if this is real, but some claim that EA have had fake Facebook accounts to defend them, and then someone screwed up. Link to pic on a humor page: http://naurunappula.com/1050795/ea-on-paras-d-ja-drm-d http://naurunappula.com/1050795/ea-on-paras-d-ja-drm-d Could happen, and if true, a bit embarrassing. If not true, shows how people want to hurt them.

389 points by ScotterC 14y ago

Can someone explain what exactly happened with SimCity? From the article I gather that it had something to do with DRM but the author never explained what exactly made it unplayable.

criley 14y ago
Trouble downloading and installing the game, massive login queues (that recheck the queue once every 30 minutes), trouble creating cities, troubles loading creating cities, disconnections, features have been removed to help handle stress, etc. Basically, it's hard to get it downloaded and installed. If you do that, it's very difficult to login to play. If you manage that, it's very difficult to do the tutorial or claim a city or load your city. If you manage that, it's very difficult to play the game without experiencing disconnects or server-related dysfunction that directly affects gameplay. Basically, it's nothing like the experience they wanted to deliver.
- sageikosa 14y ago
  They should probably have an "achievement" for passing each of those hurdles; turn the task of running a game into a game itself...
  - nwh 14y ago
    Achievements are disabled at the moment, so that wouldn't work either.
ryusage 14y ago
You have to be connected to their servers to play it, just like you would with an MMO style game. Unfortunately, just like an MMO style game at launch, their servers are totally overloaded right now and many people are just completely unable to play the game. The uproar is because the online requirement isn't inherently necessary to the gameplay (although EA has done their best to add some multiplayer aspects). It's primarily a business decision intending to make it more difficult to pirate or buy the game used.
deleted 14y ago
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kwanbis 14y ago
They implemented a DRM scheme where you have to be always connected to the internet, and their servers. Servers fail. Game does not game.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
The latest, just released, version of SimCity includes a form of DRM which basically involves hosting a part of the game's functions on a server, so that the only way to play the game is to be connected to the server. Due to whatever reason, likely poor capacity planning, a huge number of people who have bought the game have not been able to play it at all due to the servers being overloaded or inaccessible.
error54 14y ago
Thanks everyone for clearing that up for me!

ScotterC 14y ago

I've been kind of surprised by ign's writing lately. They've gotten a lot more thoughtful, past the simple game review writing and have much more intelligent pieces these days.

kyrra 14y ago

Having played simcity as much as the servers have allowed since launch, there are definitely a number of online tie-ins. I'm sure they could have done it with player run servers or LAN type connectivity, but it removes the social aspect of the game. I rather line being able to look at the leader board, then load the cities listed there to see what they look like. Playing with a few friends in a region is a pretty cool idea, though there are fewer interactions as I would have liked, there are still a lot. Their server connectivity is definitu beyond just DRM, but it's hard to say how they could have done their design without the server aspect.

mikeash 14y ago
Surely those tie-ins could have been written to degrade gracefully when the servers are unavailable, rather than just refusing to run the entire game.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  I'm mixed on this. I really dislike online DRM, but one of the greatest weaknesses of SimCity 4 was that the average home computer had no hope of simulating a large city. This is still true today - while most computers could handle the graphics engine behind it, the simulation engine would still eat your machine for lunch. Moving the city simulation server-side certainly has its justifications - it opens up the field to more players with weaker machines. That being said, it's hard to imagine that, given the ginormous increase in CPU performance between SimCity 4 and now, that they couldn't have made a simulation engine fast enough (and optimized enough) to run offline.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    Is this actually the case? I've seen a lot of people say it, but then I've also seen some people say that they were able to keep playing for considerable periods of time even while the servers were offline. It sounds like one of those things where marketing-speak got misinterpreted as a technical design that isn't actually how it's built, but I really haven't investigated besides reading comments.

seanoliver 14y ago

I've been looking forward to this game for years now. I thought it would never come. And now that it's here I'm totally saddened and appalled that EA would ruin such an incredible legacy for such petty reasons. There has to be another way to stem piracy without totally obliterating the value of an otherwise excellent game...

islon 14y ago
That's what EA does best: ruin games. (Yeah, I know there are exceptions).
samsolomon 14y ago
It is unfortunate. I've also been waiting on this game for years. On the plus side there are some entertaining 5-star reviews. http://www.amazon.com/SimCity-Limited-Edition-Pc/product-reviews/B007FTE2VW/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_5?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addFiveStar&showViewpoints=0 http://www.amazon.com/SimCity-Limited-Edition-Pc/product-rev...

jfoutz 14y ago

If anyone could achieve a decent launch, it's blizzard. They have a lot of money and talent, and a real attention to detail. They're willing to wait to ship games "till they're ready" But launch still eludes them. I've purchased every game through Diablo 3, but that put me off the whole thing. Heart of the swarm will be the first Blizzard game i just don't bother with. The launch will be a disaster. Since they've taken away any reason for me to get excited about the launch, i've found that really leaks over into my excitement about the game. Good luck to EA, good luck to Blizzard, you've committed your businesses to a technical infrastructure you're just not competent to build or manage. Seems like a risky strategy to me. Especially because games aren't really that important. It's not critical like food. There are a bunch of other offerings available.

Fauntleroy 14y ago
I don't recall the Starcraft 2 launch being hindered in any large way, so I can't imagine the Heart of the Swarm launch being any worse. Guess we'll all find out in a few days...
toki5 14y ago
> But launch still eludes them. I've purchased every game through Diablo 3, but that put me off the whole thing. Heart of the swarm will be the first Blizzard game i just don't bother with. The launch will be a disaster. This seems to me a bold claim to make. Diablo III's launch was, in many ways, a huge new service for them, a new infrastructure to test and maintain, and they were quick to fix issues with it. Compare this to the launch of The Burning Crusade expansion pack -- it was a rough launch! -- but over time, they managed to smooth their systems out such that now, even a content launch as huge as Mists of Pandaria went smoothly. WoW is a different game, but it illustrates their iterative healing process. Since the Wings of Liberty launch went smoothly, I wouldn't expect anything less of Heart of the Swarm, as it's being released on a system that's here, ready, polished, and tested. We might see a few hiccups, but nothing close to Diablo III. I'd hardly call Battle.net an infrastructure that Blizzard is "just not competent to build or manage."
- jfoutz 14y ago

ry0ohki 14y ago

Can someone confirm that the online mode offers nothing but DRM? The fact that they had to disable Cheetah speed makes me think they really are offloading some of the game simulations to the servers. It certainly feels like a much speedier game then SimCity 4 (when it works).

s666 14y ago
there is no "offline" mode, its all online and it all doesnt work
danielweber 14y ago
Parts of the game logic are run on the server. I don't expect more game companies to stay away from this; I expect them to do this a lot more for PC gaming. Probably not explicitly, but as much as people in /r/technology insists piracy doesn't matter, the companies continue to care. With online games, the need to worry about that largely evaporates. Instead, I expect companies to put in proper rate limiting, fallbacks, and plan for the ability to spin up extra servers in case of high demand.
- fennecfoxen 14y ago
  "Parts of the game logic are run on the server." By which they mean: storage of save-games, and resource trading with your city-neighbors. That is ALL.
  - DocG 14y ago
    You are right. People have managed to play trough server crashes without noticing. Only after they quit to region, it disconnects. City is managed locally. Only region management save files are server side.
  - betterunix 14y ago
    If I remember SimCity correctly, saved games are pretty important. One can only get so far without saving...

s666 14y ago

Its a fucking disaster, for 3 days im looking at "server busy" message, in that time i only managed to play for about 1 hour total and it lost my city somewhere! grrr fuck you EA

diminoten 14y ago

So can I pirate this bad boy? What's the status of the crack?

danielweber 14y ago
It's an online game. Pirating it is about as feasible as running a pirate copy of google.com.
- bradbeattie 14y ago
  Online in its final packaging perhaps, but what effort would it take to get running locally? If one can play offline for a couple of minutes, the online portion is likely not as critical as it's being portrayed.
- illuminate 14y ago
  "It's an online game. Pirating it is about as feasible as running a pirate copy of google.com" What a silly, untrue statement. A better analogy would be "as feasible as running a copy of World of Warcraft offline", which people do.
  - sgarman 14y ago
    Which in a way relates to Irregardless's post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5345217 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5345217. One of my favorite MMO's Ragnarok Online won't get locked away and lost when Gravity decides to close it down, there are plenty of backends and open source projects that support the game.
    - illuminate 14y ago
      I really prefer playing shards to the original game. Less/no grind, I can whiz through most of a MMO including the minimal story in a few months, the price isn't necessarily the issue, I just don't care to compete with millions of other people and devote several days a week to survive at that level and stay up to date (let alone be on "top".) I want to have fun, I don't need artificial constraints to surpass. Thank goodness for these emulators, which are fun now and will continue to be fun when pocket-sized in the future :)

ryusage 14y ago

It's an interesting case study. This happens with nearly every MMO and people grumble but accept it. Within a couple weeks, the server issues are mostly resolved and people don't think about it anymore. And yet, people are pissed about this. The fact that people see the game as single player seems to make a huge difference. It seems the lesson is that, if you want to do the always-on thing, you need to design your game so that it doesn't even make sense to play it alone. I'm really curious to see what SimCity's sales are like in a month though. I wouldn't be too terribly shocked if people just sucked it up and bought it anyway as long as the servers are stable. If that happens, then maybe EA didn't make such a mistake after all?

dacilselig 14y ago
I think EA's reputation was the fuel to the fire in the case. Kind of a perfect storm.
masklinn 14y ago
> The fact that people see the game as single player seems to make a huge difference. Indeed. And there's also the fact that MMO are — for the most part — "long term" experiences. Now single-player games can be as well, but for the most part are not, the majority of Diablo III buyers have probably moved on already to some other games, where a WoW player will be in it for years, so the rough few first weeks aren't much of an issue.
Irregardless 14y ago
Server woes are a necessary evil with MMOs, and people buy the game knowing they'll have to deal with some amount of downtime due to maintenance, overcrowding or just plain growing pains. Try telling FPS players that their game will be unavailable every Tuesday morning for 6-12 hours and they'll probably riot -- that's standard downtime in the MMO world though.
- outworlder 14y ago
  No, that's actually standard WOW downtime. Check out Eve Online. They've been gradually decreasing downtime. Last time I played, it was like 30 minutes every day, with 15 minutes just for the cluster to reboot (the client has a nice server status, with a countdown and ETA). Their goal was to reduce it to zero (it was 1 hour when I first started playing).

Irregardless 14y ago

> There's also the question of preserving gaming history. As we saw with THQ last month, publishers aren't immortal. They can die, and had THQ implemented always-online DRM in Darksiders II, all copies of that game might've died with it when the rights to the series weren't bought up by another publisher. That's the part that concerns me the most. I still install (and play) lots of old games on every computer I own -- King's Quest VI, C&C: Red Alert, Worms: Armageddon, etc. And who could live without the console classics like Goldeneye or Ocarina of Time? All you have to do is pull out the disc (or cartridge), pop it in, and play. We still don't know exactly what will happen with this new generation of games that consumers are merely "renting" from companies like EA, but piracy seems to be our only guaranteed method of preserving them. What happens if you want to play Battlefield 3 again 10 years from now? You might be able to access it IFF: 1. Your account is still in good standing (not banned) 2. EA still exists 3. EA has decided to maintain support for Origin 4. EA has decided to maintain support for Battlefield 3 5. You remember your PW or can prove to EA you're the account owner There's not much history to base this speculation on yet, but what little we do have shows that that's an extremely unlikely scenario. If there's any chance to preserve the games we're playing now, it's probably up to us to make it happen.

danielweber 14y ago
but piracy seems to be our only guaranteed method of preserving them You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. This is the future of gaming. Companies are just going to avoid all the grief of piracy and weird DRM by either moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles) or into games that have essential online components. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. I'd love to by a game and install it on my PC without it taking things over, and the publishers would love to write that and not worry about DRM. But we can't get that because each of us doesn't trust the other party to defect.
- Irregardless 14y ago
  > You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. I'm tempted to believe that due to the simulation grunt work being done server-side. But people also said the same thing about WoW and Starcraft II, yet you can easily play either of those for free with fully functioning multiplayer (just not on Battle.net).

mjn 14y ago

Quip seen on Twitter [1]: "Disabling features of SimCity due to ineffective central infrastructure is probably the most realistic simulation of the modern city." [1] https://twitter.com/ibogost/status/309756131155271680 https://twitter.com/ibogost/status/309756131155271680

timc3 14y ago

I have been waiting to pay and play this for months now, even to the point of upgrading hardware. I was even part of the Beta. Well I am going to vote with my dollars and not buy it. Probably ever. If it worked offline it would have been a different story.

b3b0p 14y ago

If they had called this Sim City Online and marketed as not the next Sim City, but more of an MMO like Ever Quest, Guild Wars, and Star Wars Galaxies would be people be complaining as much if they knew they had to be online to play it. Sim City 4, 2000, and the original still run perfect and are extremely fun to play. Sim City 4 is on Steam even making it easy to get right now. I'm tempted to pick that up since I have not played it. I loved the original and 2000 though.

jordan0day 14y ago
This, exactly. In another discussion on hn, someone was basically saying "no one acts so surprised when you can't access Facebook if your internet connection is down, why are they so ticked off here?" I'd argue that it's because most people have a reasonable expectation that a locally-installed, single-player game should work regardless of connectivity. There may be potentially valid technical reasons why SimCity might need or even want a persistent connection, but you absolutely need to call that out. With EA's record of shutting down still-active servers for the multi-player portions of games that were just a few years old, I would be very reticent to buy an EA product that required a server even for single-player mode.
mynameisvlad 14y ago
So what would make it different from a regular SimCity game? The fact that it has the word online after it? That's a weak argument at best. They from the start called it a new game, not a sequel, and its been known for a long time that it would have the always-on component. The game was never meant to be a sequel. That's why it's calls SimCity and not SimCity 5. People just decide to interpret it as such even if its not.
- svachalek 14y ago
  So you are arguing that "SimCity Online" does not sound different than a regular SimCity game, but "SimCity" does? Does not compute.
  - mynameisvlad 14y ago

zdgman 14y ago

I don't actually think this is a danger of always on DRM more growing pains from an industry (gaming) that is learning how to build infrastructure that can scale to the size of their audience. Games are going to move toward becoming services just like any popular web app you use in your day to day life and I am not mad about that. I don't ever give a second though to whether Pivotal Tracker, Evernote or Flickr will be around in a few years, I accept the thought that may not be and use the tools because I enjoy them. Gaming as a medium is trying to evolve and find a business model that can allow them to scale games to audiences that are bigger and trying to make them more complex without having to tap into all the power your computer / console may have. I have worked in the game industry and while I can support people being upset and I am more interested in how this impacts the type of gameplay experiences we have in the future. I would be interested in seeing startups spring up around supporting cloud infrastructure and analytics for game companies. Sort of like an amazon for Game Devs

jwr 14y ago

I treat anything that is DRM-encumbered as a rental, and make buying decisions accordingly. It is not something I own, and I do not expect to be able to use it beyond a certain time horizon (a year or two). Same goes for DRM-protected books or music.

npsimons 14y ago
Same here; only difference is, I don't rent books, music, movies, games or software. Sell me a copy, or lose a sale.
TillE 14y ago
Yep. For any game with severely limiting DRM, the maximum price I'm willing to pay is $5, which I deem fair for an indeterminate rental with no guarantees. I think Assassin's Creed 2 has been down to $6 a couple times on Steam sales, but I'm not quite willing to put down even one extra dollar. Oh well, their loss. Meanwhile, I've spent a couple hundred dollars on Kickstarter games in the recent past, all of which promised a DRM free option.

seanc722 14y ago

Oi... Don't get me started. I loved when my cousin would bring his PC over and we would just sit there playing CnC, Diablo or SC in LAN. Now we have to go online for everything and there is frequently issues.

jamespitts 14y ago

I predict that EA will cave-in to some extent and release a modified version of Sim City. Let the game be used in the manner that the vast majority of your paying customers prefer, or suffer a major loss of reputation.

illuminate 14y ago
"I predict that EA will cave-in to some extent and release a modified version of Sim City" Doubtful.

uptown 14y ago

Ironic that this is happening on a game that's all about mitigating disasters.

Armbrs 14y ago
It's all part of their plan. Now that everyone claims to know what EA should have done, they're primed to buy the sequel, SimServer. Where you get to layout the network infrastructure for a new online game.

zerohm 14y ago

I'm sorry but as a gaming enthusiast, I'm experiencing some major schadenfreude here. EA's tactics, ethics and influence have been the worst in the industry for the last 10 years. Pushing DRM, buying up smaller studios, releasing endless add-on packs and DLC. Thankfully I haven't been addicted to any of their games since Dungeon Keeper. That was a great game.

rozap 14y ago

I feel so sorry for guys and girls responsible for keeping the systems up and running at EA. Days without sleep, without a doubt. And I'm sure their managers are cracking the whips and blaming all the bad things an them. It just makes me sad to think of :(

phene 14y ago
They decided to work at that sweatshop...

borgchick 14y ago

I also miss the days when you could just start up a BF2 server on your LAN and have your family and friends join the game for some fun.

rohern 14y ago

I do not understand the gamer community. EA has been treating you guys like crap for years and you keep coming back for more. Just stop buying their products. I know it sucks not to have access to a new game, but make a stand for an industry you care about and stop supporting a lousy company that has distain for you.

davidroberts 14y ago

Having been required to defend undefensible companies policies in some customer service jobs I previously held, I feel really sorry for the customer service agent here. Probably somebody hoping to use this job as a leg up to something better, but now he is stuck in angry customer hell with nothing to do but quote policies that make them angrier. And his performance is probably being judged based on some customer satisfaction survey where even one unsatisfied customer is enough to lose a month's worth of bonuses.

jl6 14y ago

12 years ago I quit gaming because decent titles weren't available for Linux. I now have a great job and family, part of which I attribute to spending thousands of hours learning about life and technology instead of playing games. Give it up people, video games = fast-forwarding your life. (Actually I'm not really suggesting being that strict. I did return to play the occasional top title like Portal 2, but on a strictly controlled diet. Gaming should be a small enough part of your life that such DRM is a non-issue)

lotharbot 14y ago
My wife did excellent work on a training simulator, and regularly impressed both the military customer and higher ups on the corporate side. She credited three video games with building her most impressive skills: Descent taught her to visualize and maneuver in 3D space, Starcraft taught her to think about force composition and disposition, and Nethack taught her to make thousands of decisions (and type thousands of characters) without making mistakes. She still games pretty extensively (she'll be taking Tuesday off for the SC2 expansion), and has a great job and family. And at least part of her excellence is due to the way she uses video games to sharpen her mind.
- lttlrck 14y ago
  Descent... well you needed as certain aptitude to play that game well. A degree in three-dimensional awareness would also have helped.
danilocampos 14y ago
> Give it up people, video games = fast-forwarding your life. While I agree with you in principle – I doubt I play more than one or two games a year – I resent your sanctimonious tone. You've no way of knowing how people are using their games. Modern games present a lot of opportunities for exploring power and morality. Even sexuality. For some, the escapism represented by games may be as close to vacation or therapy as economic reality allows. For others, they're a vacuous waste of time that could be better spent. But you don't know, so don't claim to.
14y ago

Buzaga 14y ago

2591 1 star ratings of 2805 total LOL! http://www.amazon.com/SimCity-Limited-Edition-Pc/dp/B007FTE2VW/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t http://www.amazon.com/SimCity-Limited-Edition-Pc/dp/B007FTE2... I'm thinking this fail may be so epic it can kill always-on-DRM forever, force EA to back up on their customer-pissing force-feeding stuff like this I'm not in the gaming industry, but launch is probably the most important event and, with this, they fucked the launch of one of the most adored, famous and known PC game franchises of the World Firstly, the game reviews will suffer forever(that amazon rating is probably NEVER cease to be 1 star [unless EA starts paying chinese to do that too]), that must cost sales Secondly and most important, word-of-mouth must account for A LOT of game sales, the hype of your friends, co-workers talking about a game must be the reason for most of non-hardcore-gamers sales... I, for example, only bought Diablo 3 because all my co-workers wouldn't shut about getting it, even tho I was a hardcore gamer in the past, played Diablo and Diablo 2, I wouldn't buy if it wasn't for the hype... people are PISSED and EA is probably losing a ton of money because of it I'm almost certain this DRM will ultimately cost them considerably more than piracy would take, it's perfect! As we say in Brazil: Time comes and the whip hits your own ass!

chinpokomon 14y ago

The truly disappointing thing to me, was that I was really excited and looking forward to playing Spore. That is another Maxis game produced by EA that I've completely lost interest in because of the DRM. From the sound of it, I need to stay away from this one too. It is as though EA doesn't want my money.

deleted 14y ago

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ignostic 14y ago

I dunno, you don't see the outcry when the thing is reliably up and working correctly. I play several games that are "always on" or "internet only," and we gamers seem completely fine with it as long as up-time is 99.99%. People bought the game knowing the DRM would be heavy. That's not what's killing SimCity. The real reason this failed is because it broke. It crashed and burned terrifically. It was implemented poorly, and it was really unreliable. The warning here is this: make shit that works. We would see the same outcry if an offline game crashed regularly, deleted saves, and had bugs on opening day that made it unplayable.

stcredzero 14y ago

> let it be yet another lesson to publishers like EA and Activision/Blizzard, and platform owners Microsoft and Sony, who may be considering always-on DRM in next-gen consoles or PC games: don't even think about it. It's a pipe dream But this is Always-Online DRM done wrong. You DO NOT prioritize prevention of pirate-enabled playing of your game. You DO NOT implement anything which causes legitimate users to not be able to play. You DO prioritize UX over anything else at launch. You bias heavily to avoid false positives. Legit users (i.e. customers) are your first priority -- as they should be. Most of all, you do not live in the fantasy world of DRM being some kind of impenetrable fortress. Basically, the resources of the entire Internet are arrayed against you, and the forces on your side constitute several hundred people in your company at most. You as the game publisher aren't the evil empire. You're the guerrillas. You don't have a vast army and an impenetrable fortress. You have a few fighters on your side and a jungle to hide in. Here is what you do: You prioritize detection. You let the pirates play. You let the pirates believe that they've broken your DRM by throwing some honeypot DRM at them for them to break. All the while, you're detecting them. Then, when they think they've won, you use assets that you can control (servers) to restrict the pirate-enabled users you've detected. The point here is to be the one to keep the pirates guessing, not the other way around. Let them announce cracks, then make sure they get egg on their face a week after their "release -- again and again. Basically, you fight dirty to make sure that your product is far superior to the pirate's. The way to have DLC in the modern age is to make sure that a key element of your "DLC" always stays on the server.

ddunkin 14y ago

It sounds like the torrent version is going to be awesome when it comes out, all the features we want without the BS in the way.

Pherdnut 14y ago

Why does it have to be a warning to publishers? Clearly customers keep coming back or they wouldn't keep repeating the same idiotic behavior. I'm not sure I feel sorry for anybody in this case other than the guy who was such a non-gamer he never heard of DRM.

suresk 14y ago

Perhaps its because I play MMOs and other online-only games, but the endless complaining about DRM and always-online play is getting a little boring. What I have to wonder, though, is how they botched the launch so badly. They know when they are launching, they (should) roughly know how many users each server can support, and they should have a rough idea of how many games they are going to sale in the first few days. How did they screw it up? Is forecasting game purchases that inexact? I'd think you could derive a number at least close to being accurate from the amount of pre-sales, then multiply it by some factor to give yourself some safety. At the very least, you'd think there'd be contingency plans for quickly standing up new servers in response to demand.

ashleyblackmore 14y ago

My experience of this article: 1) Read opening text 2) See container (presumably a video) with no explanation. I cannot load the video. 3) Read next paragraph to see what the video was about. No explanation. Close tab.

rikacomet 14y ago

I somehow saw this coming as recent as Sim City 4. But all in all, this is proving to be a good improvement, but a bad implementation. What is even the need of the online DRM? is this another of those: " Try to save billions of dollars from piracy, that do not exist " ? I was planning to buy this game, now I don't.

Kiro 14y ago

Am I the only one who has no problem with always-online DRM? In what situations don't you have internet nowadays?

andyking 14y ago
I'm moving house next week and won't have a connection to the internet for a little while. I'd rather pass the time playing SimCity than watch crap TV after work for a week or so.
kaoD 14y ago
I love playing Sim City 4 on holidays in a little village with no internet connection.
dragontamer 14y ago
The real question is: in what situation do you not have internet connection OR the server is down. In this case, it appears the server has been down for a significant number of players. Therefore, many people can't play... even if everything is fine on your end. Things get worse however. According to one of the links, EA's servers seem to have a corruption issue as well: http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2013/03/BEvZyQfCQAAlekP.jpg http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2013/03/BEvZ... If you can't trust that your city will be there tomorrow due to EA's shoddy servers, then there is very little incentive to even play the game. I guess it might happen with a local save as well... but local saves of a game seems like an easier problem to solve.

berlinbrown 14y ago

Is the game any good?

rdl 14y ago

They seem to have fixed most of the performance problems in the last couple days. Still not sure why they couldn't have done this correctly from the start, but it's at least not horrible now.

ptaipale 14y ago

Don't know if this is real, but some claim that EA have had fake Facebook accounts to defend them, and then someone screwed up. Link to pic on a humor page: http://naurunappula.com/1050795/ea-on-paras-d-ja-drm-d http://naurunappula.com/1050795/ea-on-paras-d-ja-drm-d Could happen, and if true, a bit embarrassing. If not true, shows how people want to hurt them.